Originally Posted by
Captain Schmidt
I have been on many flights when an announcement has been made along the lines of "If a Mr/Mrs/Dr ABC/XYZ etc is on-board, would they please make themselves known to the crew." I'm always ever slightly concerned that said airline (and it's been a few different airlines) has seemingly no idea whether an individual boarded or not.
I think this happens when a customer who has checked in for a flight doesn't board the airplane, shortly before the doors are closed. In that situation the airline would generally need to remove that passenger's bags from the hold, which is time consuming & a real pain in the
It isn't that the airline thinks that the passenger has boarded; they think he or she has NOT and they want to confirm that before going to the step of searching for and removing bags from the hold.